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Works With

Does Garzed work with your Rachio, Ecowitt or hose timer?

Garzed is wireless soil-moisture watering built on hardware you can buy off the shelf: an Ecowitt soil sensor reads each area, a Rachio valve does the watering, and Garzed decides when. Most gardens and lawns run on a schedule that doesn't know what the soil is doing — this is the missing layer on top of gear you may already own.

What each piece gets you

Nothing is required. Every row below is a complete, working way to use Garzed, and each piece adds a capability rather than unlocking the last one. Only Full Auto needs both.

No hardware
Areas and crops, crop compatibility, the planting calendar, harvest projections, the season journal and growing guidance. Usable from day one.
Soil sensor only
Live soil readings for each area, learned soil capacity, and the visibility to know when to water. No automated watering.
Smart valve only
Manual watering from the app, plus schedules with rain skips. If you already have irrigation, you organise your areas by valve.
Both
Full Auto — Garzed waters each area from its own soil moisture, pulsing and re-checking until the soil is right. This is the only thing that needs both pieces.

Supported hardware

Ecowitt · WH51 or WH52 soil sensor

Stake one in each area. Reads soil moisture every 15 minutes and sends it to Garzed through an Ecowitt gateway. The WH52 is a 3-in-1 that also measures soil temperature and EC.

Rachio · Smart Hose Timer or Rachio 3

A battery hose timer on a spigot, or a wired Rachio 3 controller running your existing in-ground zones. Garzed fires individual Rachio 3 zones from each area's soil moisture.

Ecowitt or Tempest · Weather station (optional)

Optional at every level. Garzed uses a local forecast for rain skips and frost warnings by default; pair a station and it switches to live readings from your own yard.

Soil moisture comes from Ecowitt sensors only. Hunter, Orbit and Rachio's other controllers aren't supported yet. See the exact models we recommend →

Where Garzed fits against a timer or a smart controller

What you're comparing
Basic hose timerSet it and walk away
Smart controller aloneRachio, Hunter, B-hyve
Garzed+ soil sensor
Custom watering schedule
✓
✓
✓
Skips on rain forecast
—
✓
✓
Reads soil moisture
—
Wired only*
Wireless
Waters based on what plants actually need
—
—
✓
Learns each bed's soil over time
—
—
✓
Combines sensors and valves from different brands
—
—
✓
Frost & heat warnings
—
—
✓
*Smart controllers like Hunter Hydrawise support wired soil sensors that require running wire from each area back to the controller. Garzed reads continuous moisture from wireless sensors (Ecowitt WH51) so each area just needs a battery-powered probe.

Common questions

Do I need special hardware to use Garzed?

Not for the Free plan — you can manually log waterings, track your plants, and use the calendar with no hardware. To get smart watering features, you'll need a soil moisture sensor and/or smart valve.

What if I already have a Rachio sprinkler controller (or Hunter, Orbit, etc.)?

If it's a Rachio 3, you're set — Garzed fires its individual zones based on each area's soil moisture. That's the one sprinkler controller we support today; Hunter, Orbit, and Rachio's other controllers aren't supported yet, with more on the roadmap.

I already have soil sensors. What does Garzed add?

Garzed learns each bed's soil and each plant's dry-down point, so it knows the watering range for that bed: whether it needs water, sits comfortably in range, or is full. It keeps adapting from your real soakings and the bed's own history, and reads several sensors in one bed as a single picture. On Full Auto it then waters each bed to match.

Can I use Garzed for just one raised bed?

Yes. Even a single bed benefits from moisture monitoring, the calendar, and the bot. You can start with just a sensor (no valve required) and add automation later.

How long does setup take?

If your hardware is already paired in the Ecowitt and Rachio apps, connecting them to Garzed takes about 10–15 minutes — you copy your API keys from each, and Garzed handles the rest. Hardware installation (mounting sensors, plumbing the valve to your hose) is separate and depends on your setup.

Does Garzed work outside the US?

Not yet. Setup currently asks for a US ZIP code, so Garzed is US-only for now. The watering itself is driven by your own sensors and your own frost dates, so nothing about the model is US-specific — international support is a setup problem we intend to solve, not a limitation of how it waters.